Somewhere in the middle...

I’m not the sharpest crayon in the box…nor am I the dullest.

As a young man I so wanted to be “special”…most of my deviant behaviors and rebellions were a ruse to throw people off from seeing who I really was, to appear to be somehow above the rules or to be an exception of some kind while at the same time, acting out in such a way that perhaps someone might interpret my actions and help me.

Since then life’s taught me that it’s in the expression of love where I’ve most fully experienced God. It’s a very personal, individual thing for each of us. We use the word relationship to describe those places where we share a common ground with something or someone. That’s so important because it’s our connectedness that opens up our lives to all that God longs to give us, it also allows us to experience a greater meaning through the abandonment of ourselves.

Then again, sometimes it’s just all about the tuna salad…

this is how I roll…and whatever you may do, don’t forget the woven wheat crackers (just sayin)

I don’t normally prepare food in the bathroom but I’m in a motel room… I know, EWWWWW

I’ve always been a believer of “that which does not kill us, (can make us deathly ill) and then we become resistant to it”.

I’m really glad to be tucked away here in this room today, I’ve been wanting to write lately but I’ve just been unable to get that first sentence or working title to compel me to do more with it. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to write about how glad I am that I’m not one of those really smart people who won’t accept anything that they can’t understand completely or who reject the notion that there had to be “intelligence” behind intelligent design. (Personally, I’m not interested in a God that I can completely understand) I still want to know why, if we evolved from apes, there are still non-evolved apes today.

What happened there?

Another recurrent (and connected) thought I’ve been having has to do with how we try to put God into a box, limiting the ways that He can show us love or how we can experience Him. Some people don’t believe in using medicine’s because God is their healer,does that mean that God can’t work through doctors? Some won’t listen to any “secular” type music because it’s not considered to be Christian…but God spoke to Moses through a bush! They’re unable to understand that sometimes people are challenged or even inspired more by mediocre preaching than they are by some really great preachers. That it’s primarily through the presence of need that the best in people is stirred up enough for them to take action…

Wait a minute Alton, you’re starting to sound like one of those liberal theology, back slidden, lukewarm, types that the bible says will be spewed out of His mouth for being “neither hot, nor cold”. Well, the truth is that I am feeling colder towards “religion”, and warmer towards relationships. Colder towards rules and laws and the condemnation that’s heaped on people in the name of “Christian love”, warmer to a personal ministry that firstly bonds itself to people through a shared compassionate understanding of sin and the effects it’s had on our life before one ever quotes even one bible verse to them. Do you ever wonder why people, maybe even some that you know, will stand up and cheer,scream,and shout at a kids baseball game…and then sit there like the living dead on Sunday morning while the pastor stands on his head spittin out nickles to get a rise out of them. I wonder if it’s got anything to do with where they “see God” or with how they see themselves being involved in this relationship as “the father”. maybe it’s just, somewhere in the middle…